Lucy deliberately stopped speaking and refused to talk.
At that moment, my blood seemed to run cold, an uncontrollable chill spreading through me, but my voice was filled with fury and despair.
“Jeremy! Did you bring me here so I could die in an explosion instead of Lucy?”
He hurriedly shook his head in denial. “No, no! Anne, that’s not it! You know how to crack programs—you can try to unlock it from the inside. But Lucy doesn’t know anything. I could only save her first…”
I broke down and cut him off. “There’s a bomb. So why didn’t you call the police?”
When he heard this, Jeremy shut his mouth.
His reaction instantly made me understand that there were no hackers at all. Jeremy had actually provoked a wrong force and this was a warning. At this moment, he probably didn’t even know who his opponent was.
But the other party knew him well and even knew that for Jeremy, the most important person was Lucy, not me.
"Anne, don't be afraid, I'll take Lucy back first. She was injured and dressed so thinly. When I return to the company, I will hire the most powerful hacker to help you defuse the bomb!"
“Wait for me!” As he spoke, Jeremy lifted Lucy into his arms and left.
In that moment, I felt utterly hopeless about him. I didn't even have the thought to call him back.
Looking at the timed bomb with its flashing countdown, I forced myself to stay calm. Luckily, the computer I’d used to crack the outer door was still in this room.
I held the computer and tried to unlock the program, but the moment I linked to the program, my computer was instantly infected by a virus. I tried countless algorithms and couldn't unlock it until the computer completely crashed.
In order to decode it, I heightened all my senses, staying intensely alert to every movement around me. At that moment, I distinctly heard the sound of flowing water nearby.
But this is a suburb, where does the water come from?
Drip.
Drip, drip.
Whoosh!
A jet of water gushed forth from the surrounding walls.
I glanced at the countdown timer on the time bomb. Less than half an hour remained. In that instant, I thought of Jeremy.
Would he rush to rescue me after sending Lucy away?
But seeing the scene before me, I sobered instantly. He had locked me in this deadly prison for Lucy’s sake—why would he care about my survival?
Rather than hoping Jeremy would come back to save me, I had to think about another way out.
An icy cold crept into my knees. Without realizing it, the water level in the room had already risen to them.
I forced myself to stand up, moved a chair onto the toilet beside me and stood on it. Judging by the rising water level, it was only a matter of time before it surpassed the height of the chair.
And the most urgent threat at this moment was the bomb. Not only had my computer crashed, but it had also been soaked.
Just as I looked at the bomb again, its countdown suddenly jumped straight to ten seconds.
“What’s going on?”
I frantically scanned the room for any other options. Just as I was considering whether to jump into the water and take a gamble, the bomb's countdown stopped and the water level began to recede.
Without pausing to think about why, I plunged into the water, ready to smash through the door and escape. But the moment I touched it, the door swung open automatically.
Could it be that Jeremy had arrived with his men?
That thought vanished completely as I stepped through the gate. The area was deserted, with no sign anyone had ever been there.
I could only conclude that Jeremy’s enemies merely wanted to warn him, to make him wary of them. They never truly wanted to take his life.
After walking three kilometers, I finally hitched a ride with a kind stranger in his SUV and escaped that hellhole. Then asked him to take me to the airport.
After booking the earliest available flight, I finally boarded the plane to my father's orchard.
No matter how painful the past might be, it no longer had anything to do with me. I refused to step back into that love-hate relationship again.
